The count Henri d'Ursel shot La perle (The Pearl) under the pseudonym of Henri d'Arche "in the flush of inexperience", as he put it. D'Ursel made only one film, based on a screenplay by the poet Georges Hugnet. In a Paris straight out of the serials of Louis Feuillade, the hero goes in search of a pearl which constantly disappears in a string of bizarre encounters - sneak thieves in a hotel wearing body stockings ˆ la Musidora, a beautiful fiancŽe on a bicycle and a somnambulist walking the rooftops in a night-shirt, amorous fantasies in the undergrowth. Hugnet himself played this waking dreamer, haunted by an unending eroticism reflected in the images.